


Waking Up In The Fog

by fictionalfaerie



Series: Could I Call This Place Home? [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Waking Up After An Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 06:38:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18115325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalfaerie/pseuds/fictionalfaerie
Summary: Immediately after the series one finale.---It all stops so suddenly that it feels like slamming into a brick wall. He tries to catch his breath, looks around at his siblings doing the same, and barely has time to notice that they all seem to be different-





	Waking Up In The Fog

**Author's Note:**

> -I was completely and totally overwhelmed by the massively warm reception my last piece got. I sincerely hope that those of you who enjoyed it continue to enjoy my work. Thank you so much. I cannot even begin to express how much your comments and kudos and bookmarks meant to me, truly. 
> 
> -I've tried reviving (again) my writing tumblr- FictionalFaerie. I am not overly adept at social media, so I make no promises as to how useful it is, but I am 100% open to prompts and feedback there if you're so inclined. 
> 
> -Many, many thanks go out to Alyssa for her help in getting this one out in a timely manner. I'd have likely sat on it for days and reworked it until I was miserable with it. Thank you so, so much for your time and assistance! You're a gem! ♥♥♥
> 
> -This had the briefest of edits and is likely full of glaring errors, all of which are my own. If any are so frustrating that they take you away from the story, feel free to let me know and I'll see what I can do to remedy them.
> 
> -Title from "Ghost Lights" by Woodkid

Klaus has never been through a tornado, but he imagines this is relatively close: he's holding hands with Diego and Luther, clutching on and fighting not to let his grip slip in the face of this wind whipping around them and the overpowering rush of white noise. He can feel fingers gripping his shoulder and he hopes desperately that it's Ben. He spent ten months without him, he can't imagine doing that again when he's only just gotten him back. 

Five's yelling something, instructions maybe? He can't hear him, can just see his mouth moving, can see the focus on his face. Klaus would yell back, yell about not being able to hear him, but he's afraid that if he opens his mouth he might vomit everywhere. There's so much noise and so much turbulence and the air is getting so hot, is it possible to boil alive if there's no water?

It all stops so suddenly that it feels like slamming into a brick wall. He tries to catch his breath, looks around at his siblings doing the same, and barely has time to notice that they all seem to be different- before it starts again, even more vicious for the momentary freedom from it. It had started out so gently when Five had first started his- what even is this? A time vortex?- that he’s got to admit, this violence is absolutely terrifying. 

He panics as his grip slides out of Luther’s, tenuous as it was in the first place, and when he feels Ben’s hand disappear from his shoulder he lets out a panicked shriek, trying to twist to see him, and in the process losing Diego. He can’t get ahold of them again, just feels like he’s falling, flailing as he does so. 

Klaus jolts upright as soon as he lands, clutching at his chest and trying not to cry. His freak out is interrupted, though, as he looks around in confusion. 

It’s his room, back at the house?

===

Ben falls off the bed when he lands, slamming his elbow into the floor. He stares at it in shock, wondering how it managed to hurt him so badly. That thought’s dismissed immediately as he finds himself wide eyed, rushing to a mirror.

He’s a kid again. 

Fifteen? Sixteen? Young. Decked out in pajamas and bed-ruffled hair. 

His room looks exactly like he remembers it, even though he hasn’t been in it since he died. Hargreeves had closed the door and locked it, and while Klaus was an adept lockpick, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to go in there, even to get the book Ben had been reading and wanted to finish. He’d gone out and bought a new one. Ben remembers how patient he’d been, flipping pages when asked, painting his nails and smoking joint after joint while Ben read it, not saying a word when Ben needed some time to just sit and cry when he realized how monumental something as reading a book was going to be now. 

Klaus. He needs to find Klaus.

===

Luther sits up quietly, locking his terror down and not making a noise. Vanya’s gone, he’d dropped her. They’d started shaking so hard that he’d lost her, he’d dropped her. He closes his eyes and tries to figure out where she’d fallen, which direction she’d tipped away from him in.

Allison’s hand had slipped, he’d seen it as Vanya’s arm had fallen limp against his side. He’d jerked, trying to reach out and grab it, and in the process lost Klaus’s fingertips and Vanya, all at once. Klaus would be fine, he still had Diego and he could take care of himself. 

Vanya, though, she’d been out of it, knocked out cold from all that power. If she had hit too hard wherever she’d landed, could it have killed her? How far had they fallen? What if it didn’t kill her and she woke up and tried to kill them all? That was almost worse? Wasn’t it? They shouldn’t have brought her, he’d been right. 

He forced himself to take a deep breath, take a few deep breaths, willing himself to calm down. He needed to be in control before he could deal with all of this. 

A few moments passed and he felt steady enough, opening his eyes, plan ready. 

Assess the situation, locate the others, figure out what Five’s-

He was in his bedroom. His bedroom that had been obliterated along with the mansion. Five had actually done it, tossed them back in time somehow. If he was here, maybe the others had made it, too. He just needed to figure out where they’d landed. Hopefully they were all here at the mansion.

He winced as he climbed out of bed, his whole body aching and feeling weak. Time travel really took it out of you, didn’t it? Five had said as much, but-

The boy in the mirror stopped him as he passed it, staring at him, almost mockingly. The boy’s mouth hung open, eyes widened comically. Luther raised his hand, touching his chin, running a finger over his ear, over his eyebrow. The boy in the mirror copied him perfectly. 

He tore his eyes away from the mirror, looking down at his body, and huffed out a soundless laugh. Raising his arm to touch his chest, he noticed his arm, devoid of muscles, and he sat down in the floor heavily, unable to hold himself up right in the face of this discovery.

===

Allison woke up breathless, grasping at the sheets around her. On her bed. In her room?

She got out of bed slowly, careful of her balance given the dizziness the time jump had left her with. She was a bit perplexed as to how she found herself back in her room. She heard a loud thump in the room next to hers. Hopefully that meant that Luther had landed in the mansion as well. 

Her reflection caught her eye and she turned toward it, leaning in to make sure she was seeing things correctly. 

“What the-” she murmured, her hand immediately flying up to her throat when she heard her voice. 

Her mouth gaped open in shock, taking in her hair and her nose, her height and her eyes, her throat! She’d take being a teenager again if it meant she had her voice back. 

“Is this really what Five had in mind?” she asked herself quietly, trying to tamp down on the giggles she wanted to give in to. She can't believe it, can't believe that her voice is back, her throat is healed. She never thought she'd get this again. Amazing what losing it for so short a time had done to her...

She sat back down on the bed, looking around the room and taking a deep breath. Okay. Teenager. If she was a teenager, it stood to reason that the others would be as well. The thump next door- Luther discovering it? Hopefully. The question was, was this a time related thing or a time travel related thing? Five had been, what, fifty-eight, he said? When he returned home to them as a teenager. Were they in the 2000s somewhere? Or merely a few days further back? 

“There’s an easy way to answer this, I’m sure,” she muttered, trying not to let the sound of her own voice overwhelm her. Even though it wasn’t the voice she expected to hear when she spoke, it was still a voice. “Just think…” 

She sat down at her vanity, taking deep breaths, and then- the vanity was different. There was homework spread out on it and the magazine clippings hanging around were different than she remembered from a few days ago. She grinned as she ran her hands over things, congratulating herself for the steady head in the midst of all this chaos.

All this chaos...

That was… this was going to be a real trip, wasn’t it? 

She tucked her hair behind an ear and opened her door, peering into the hallway, trying to decide what she should do.

===

Diego felt like he was going to puke. He felt like, geez, like that night he lost the match to Tommy Maxwell and proceeded to drink his way through everything the pub would sell him. That had been a pretty shitty night. Even shittier morning. He didn’t think he’d been drinking last night. What had he been doing?

When the realization hit him, he rolled over, grabbing at his trash can and actually vomiting. 

Once he had that out of the way, he stood up, only to sit back down immediately. Time travel. Five had said something about it being rough. Didn’t seem to be wrong about that. He gave in, laying back down and staring up at his ceiling. Least the house wasn’t decimated whenever they were. That was a plus. 

He looked down at himself, rolling his eyes as he took in the teenage body. “Great. F-figures.” 

He forced himself out of bed, gritting his teeth, and headed toward the bathroom to do something about his mouth. If he was going to have to deal with this, it wasn’t going to be with the lingering taste of bile.

===

Five landed roughly on the grass, forehead bouncing off the ground.

He stood up briskly, brushing off his knees and elbows, looking around. Night time. Courtyard. Lights on in the house. Annnd, Hargreeves opening the door to glare at him. 

“I wondered when you’d find your way home,” he was saying, walking toward Five. 

Five didn’t try to hide his eye roll, moving past Hargreeves and into the house. 

“Number Five!” Hargreeves barked. 

Five supposed that if there weren’t forty-five years of distance between the two of them that the tone of voice might possibly have had an effect on him. As it was, the years of solitude coupled with some of the newfound knowledge he had about the man meant that Five was somewhat impervious to the man. 

He wondered briefly if he could use his regular jumps, make it inside to check on Vanya before Reginald figured out where he was heading. If he was correct in his theory, he’d slotted neatly into place whenever this was, but his siblings would be trickier. They’d definitely been younger near the end of the time jump, and his solo appearance implied that perhaps they’d slotted into their own bodies? He’d have to do some math and theorize, but it stood to reason that something of the sort had happened. 

He could feel Reginald behind him, reaching out, so he gave in an jumped. 

Effective. Convenient. 

He looked around Vanya’s room, pleased to find her in her bed, asleep. There was a sheen of sweat along her forehead. He put his hand gently on her shoulder, shaking lightly.

===

There was so much noise, her ears ringing more harshly than after a concert, more harshly than after the shows she and Diego used to sneak into where they’d stand too close to the speakers and yell to talk over the bass. Louder than the truck engine, than Leonard’s hand slamming into that journal, than the swell of her own violin as she-

“Oh, God,” she breathed, trying to sit up, struggling against the hand pressed against her shoulder. 

“Hey, hey, calm down.” Five’s voice was grounding. He let go of her as he said it and she pulled herself up, moving away from him and curling in on herself as the events of the past few days came catching up to her. 

“You’re not dead?” she asked, unable to bring herself to look away from her hands. 

“Not dead. Don’t worry. None of us died.” 

She kept staring at her hands, noting the way her fingers weren’t long enough, her nails not jagged enough. The scar she had on the outside of her pinky finger was gone. She was…

“Am I a teenager again?” 

“You are,” he answered. She looked up at him, still the same as he had been years ago, days ago, hours ago. 

“Did I hurt you?” 

He considered for a moment, and then nodded. “No more than we deserved, though.” 

“No one deserves to be hurt,” she answered. 

“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.” 

She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. 

“I shouldn’t stay in here too long,” he told her, glancing toward her closed door. “Hargreeves saw me returning and will undoubtedly be full of questions. I need to figure out how to deal with him.” 

At the mention of their father, she felt her eyes widen, but before she could even figure out what to ask, what to say, Five interrupted, “We seem to be back to our teenage years. Your teenage years. Whatever. You’re likely still under the influence of inhibitors. If you try to use your powers, they’ll likely not work, given that.” 

She looked toward her vanity, toward the bottle of pills sitting there. 

“It’s your call, of course, if you continue to take them or not, but I can’t imagine that cutting them out completely would be smart-” 

“-I know, I shouldn’t, I’m too-” 

“-Let me finish, Vanya. Your body is used to them. Cutting them out completely is likely to wreak havoc on your system. It’s no wonder your power manifested as violently as it did. If you’d like to cut them out, I certainly won’t stop you, but I think it might be more sensible for us to come up with some sort of plan to do so?” 

“You don’t think it’s a bad idea?” she asked, trying not to look at him as she asked. 

Five crouched down by the bed, his hand coming down to clasp hers, and she couldn’t help the tears the started to slip out. 

“I’m of the opinion that you should be in charge of your own life. Hargreeves did a poor enough job the first time. Maybe we’ll all get it right this time.” 

Before she could answer, footsteps sounded in the hallway. Hargreeves. Dad. 

Five made a face at the door, patted her hand again, and disappeared. The footsteps stopped outside of her door briefly, but then continued on. 

She laid back down, pulling her covers over herself, and let out a sharp puff of breath. 

Maybe Five was right. Maybe they could get it right this time.


End file.
